by Tracy Sumner
Curiously, it wasn’t Finn’s undeniable beauty or lack of clothing that held her captivated. Instead, it was his continued effort to hide behind an aimless veneer, his countenance melancholy, his ready smile locked away when she caught him unaware, like the night on the veranda. A man grossly different than the one who’d wooed society with such wicked carelessness. There was nothing careless about his soulful glances, the impenetrable, shimmering intelligence held deep within.
She wanted access to that man more than she should.
Only she didn’t know how to ask for access. Not when he seemed to be struggling to settle back into family life and had avoided her for two days, despite his promise to tell all.
Through the open window, the sound of a pan striking the kitchen floor had her turning, the glasses dropping from her hands to dangle from the wrist chain. Her heartbeat stuttered, her mind blanking for a brief moment. Turning back, she found Finn’s riderless horse standing beside the hedge, her head twisting as if on too short a lead.
Victoria’s terror was immediate and impregnable.
Her shawl flew from her shoulders as she raced down the marble steps and across the lawn, her hair plunging from its delicate coiffure to streak her cheeks and tangle in her mouth. Her slippers were dew-soaked when she reached him, the hem of her dress soiled beyond repair, but she cared little, dropping to her knees and grasping the arm he’d flung out when he’d tumbled from his mount. His hand still clutched the reins, which she released, allowing the mare to settle. Finn’s chest rose and fell in a slightly staggered rhythm, but unlike her brother’s after his fall, it rose and fell.
He was covered in grass and earth, staining his clothing and his face. The side of his lip was cut. She dabbed at the blood with a wild glance thrown over her shoulder, a fruitless search for a footman, groom, maid. She’d finally come to understand Finn’s comment to her on the ride to Harbingdon about magical attendance by the staff. The estate operated on the unpredictable sovereignty of those gifted with a supernatural ability, upper house to lower, garden to stable, sitting room to parlor. Doors opened before she reached them, gas lamps flared without her touch. Formidable, yet no one seemed trained for even the most straightforward household position.
“Finn,” she whispered and gave his hand a squeeze, her brother’s still form lying beside his horse, the awkward twist of his neck, roaring through her mind. She closed her eyes and concentrated, finding the racing pulse at Finn’s wrist and smoothing it with her thumb. Like she would if she sought to steal time. Perhaps she could shock him back to consciousness.
“Stop. It’s beginning…to hurt to hold you off.” Finn’s lids fluttered, his hand shifting in hers. His hair was a dark spill across his cheeks, the strands much longer than current style endorsed, giving him the look of a ruffian, and effectively hiding his expression. “I landed hard…on my back. My breath…” He inhaled shakily. Twice more before trying to speak again. “The reins, thank you for taking them…as I’m guessing no groom is around. Someone who sees the future could have helped in this situation. We have one of those, you know. Edward, the footman, but I guess this tumble escaped his purview. Or maybe it’s Old Neddie. No, no, he sees the past. Edward, definitely Edward.” He dragged his tongue along his teeth. “Blast, I think I cracked one.”
Victoria rocked back on her haunches, tossing his arm aside, irritated to the soles of her leather slippers. Indeed, he’d chipped the edge of his front tooth, a minor imperfection, the first she’d found on the man aside from his unaffected arrogance, his lackadaisical indifference to everything. She was finished with men who gave less than a farthing about their futures, less than a farthing about their families. Rising to her feet, she wiped his blood on her skirt. “They’re right, Blue, you don’t care what happens to you. Go to it, then.”
He blinked hard and elbowed to a wobbly sit. “What the hell does that mean? And who, exactly, is they?”
She shook her head, thoughts piling up on each other like mud sliding down a slope. All that came out was an aggravated oath as she turned and marched back to the house, the opera glasses beating a rhythm against her hip. Imprudent, conceited toad…
He was beside her in three strides, out of breath, disheveled, dogged, blood dotting his lip and cheek. “Explain that comment to me, will you, my lady?”
Oh, would she. She halted so suddenly he had to skip back to reach her. His gaze, when it hit hers, was running as hot as hers felt. “Have you considered what it would do to those who love you should something dreadful happen? The carriage races, the brawls, the slums. Second story windows, gaming hells. Where is the care for your family, your future?” Her brother had lost his wife and infant son to illness, and he’d given up. Victoria had tried, but she’d been unable to save him. Now she was left with nothing, alone without her closest ally. She wasn’t walking that joyless path again, not even for the enticing man standing before her.
“The women,” he snarled, the first time she’d seen him act anything but bored. “You forgot about the women. The lightskirts, the demimondaines, the jaded widows. I’m jumping out of those windows for a reason, my dear.”
She tapped his chest, right above a rip in his shirt and on the edge of that wicked scar, tears of sorrow and frustration pricking her lids. He was so tall she had to stretch to reach him, and the fingertip she trailed across his bare skin burned. “You forget yourself, Mr. Alexander. The women don’t matter, the slums and the faro tables don’t matter. The clubs and the fisticuffs are meaningless. Your family—” Her words dissolved, and she turned away from him.
Or tried to.
He seized her chin, his fingers trembling against her jaw. “What is this?” he asked, a soothing tone ironing out his earlier ire, a cloud of heat and recognition unfurling around them. He tipped her gaze high, his regard penetrating. “Did this little tumble of mine truly upset you?”
She pressed her lips tight, a tear she couldn’t contain spilling free. His fingers were scalding her skin. Add to that the glorious pain of being able to, for the first time in forever, talk to someone about something real. Even as she knew talking about real things brought her closer to Finn—when being closer was a danger to her future and her heart. Swallowing, she whispered, “My brother, Charles. He reacted thusly, caring nothing for life after his wife and child died of scarlet fever. I couldn’t save him from himself, although I tried. At least, I think I did.” She shook her head as if she could shake away the memory. “He died in a riding accident.”
Finn stepped back, gradually relinquishing his hold as if he’d rather step in, comfort she feared she’d gladly accept in her fragile state. “You’re quite adept, in the most unsophisticated way, at making me feel a cad. I’ve never known a woman to be candid and gain so much through such a lack of artifice. A solitary tear enough to rip my heart from my chest.” He fingered a gash in his trousers and exhaled, gazed across the distance, then, finally, back at her.
Yanking a stalk of grass from his hair, he said softly, “I don’t ride often, or as often as I’d like due to the persistent drumbeat of thoughts in my head. It makes for a distracted trek, I realize, even though I love it. Dangerous not only for myself but the mount, a risk with a beloved beast I wouldn’t take. But you’ve been blocking, clear across the lawn, across every sitting room we’ve shared, the breakfast parlor this morning. Even from another floor in the main house, the whispers in my bedchamber are muted. I’ve been testing distances, making notes. Today, for instance, a hundred yards, maybe one-twenty. I reached the edge of the pine thicket before the voices started flowing back in. But something happened, you got sidetracked, or I did, and a thought shot right through my skull. I tried to cut it off, which is quite shocking for the person whose mind I’ve entered, hence her dropping the pan…me misjudging the height of the hedge. Bad timing all the way around.”
“There was a kitchen maid quite taken with you upon our arrival. Was she daydreaming, I wonder, while you were riding? Shocking you when you rece
ived her lurid thought—shocking her when you tried to give it back. It’s possible that I was far enough away from you for them to enter your mind.”
His lips tilted, a confession in dazzling sunlight. “If I said yes, I don’t think it will further our friendship. So I shall remain mum on the subject.”
He was so bloody gorgeous standing there, mussed and apologetic, shuffling from one glossy boot to the other, covered in dirt and blood and ignominy, that chip in his formerly flawless smile winking at her. How could she renounce a lovesick girl, right now cleaning up whatever she’d dumped out of that pan when Victoria wasn’t thinking about the man in strictly polite terms herself? “Are these the start of our experiments then?” she asked and blew a lock of hair from her face, exasperated with him and herself.
He shook his head, his lips falling open. “Pardon?”
She dropped her gaze to the opera glasses dangling from her wrist, sunlight bouncing off the gilded metal and throwing glints at their feet. She’d have given a gold sovereign to know what he was thinking, a clue to how she’d managed to disconcert the Blue Bastard when most failed. With ‘unsophisticated candor’, no doubt. Her lack of charm. “My parlor trick. The testing of distances. Your promise to enlighten me, Blue. The chronology, the League. The danger surrounding me. Is this where my education starts?”
He walked back a distancing step, tugged another reed of grass from his hair. “Are you willing?”
It depends on the request, she wanted to say with an adoring look. Artifice in spades, a playful glance fired through what she’d been told were fetching eyelashes. She knew how to flirt, how to captivate. She’d kissed three of the most eligible men in the ton, at their request, although she hadn’t enjoyed it. They were destitute, unable to assist with her financial predicament, and she unable to assist with theirs. But she hadn’t wanted to waste everything on her intended when she and Rossby created less spark than a damp fire.
Anyway, she’d be damned if she cried again if it caused this exquisite mindreading goat to look at her with pity. She wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of anything but admiration herself, she’d love to tell him.
“That dark look has me almost frightened, but I must ask about the dreams. Tori, I need to know about the dreams.”
She found his gaze, an opaque flood as vibrant as the sky. She wondered if Julian Alexander had attempted to capture the color on canvas. Unique. And familiar. Even before she’d met him, a secret she wasn’t sure she should divulge.
The mystery of his past was unfolding in the gentle twilight of her sleep—but the answers might be disturbing.
At some point, and soon, she’d have to tell Finn about the dreams.
After all, they were, in essence, his.
“I’m willing,” she said. But you may not be. Then she reached out, later she couldn’t have said why, brushing a strand of hair from his cheek. It was as silky as it looked, dark as coal, streaking amber in the sunlight, the ends curling slightly. She gave it a gentle tug before releasing it to the wind. His reaction would have been gratifying, the hushed intake of air, hand clenching into a fist at his hip, the subtle lean. If not for her own overriding it. Desire, blistering and heavy and terrifying, sending her heart to her knees. She shrugged, admitting, “I used to cut my brother’s hair so he could ride without it whipping in his eyes. I could do this for you, for your safety.”
“I’m willing,” Finn murmured, gaze fixed on her even as he took a halting step back, firmly out of reach. The air around them shimmered like waves of heat over a barren desert. One breath, two, then he strode to his mare and swung gracefully into the saddle without looking back.
She watched him ride away, wondering what they’d agreed to.
Wondering how in heaven she was going to survive a month of gazing into the saddest eyes in England.
The situation was beyond complicated.
Finn stacked his hands behind his head with a sigh that cut through the numbingly silent predawn. She was complicated, more so than any female to enter his life to date, even Piper. He slid deeper beneath the counterpane to escape his sudden unease and the chill in the air and ran his tongue over the chip in his tooth. No fire in the hearth, he noted. No pot of tea or warm cocoa waiting on the sideboard. The maid set to do those things could likely turn herself into a dog and fly over the estate or some such inspiring sorcery—but prepare a fire in an empty hearth, no thank you. Considering his preference for sleeping au naturel, maybe Harbingdon’s domestic disregard was a good thing.
I’m willing, he’d told her. A senseless declaration and they both knew it.
Of course, he was willing.
His compulsion was stronger than mere willingness, dominating his aimless norm of being swept along halfheartedly in a flood of debauchery and conceit.
Attracted.
He was attracted to Victoria Hamilton and then some. Profoundly. Incomprehensibly. When, despite his reputation, he rarely experienced honest longing. Most of his associations were a performance, that Blue Bastard fellow fulfilling expectation and nothing more. Not one step more.
Not one step.
Alone in the semi-darkness, he’d admit to being enthralled by her fiery temper, and what he suspected was a wholly generous heart, one she concealed almost as well as he concealed his. Enthralled by that willowy body and the raw intelligence shimmering behind spectacle glass. By the star-shaped freckle beside her lip. By the enchanting hoyden he imagined she’d been growing up, still showcased in the woman who didn’t care about getting dirt on her face or blood on her skirt. Someone he could teasingly roughhouse with before sliding inside her warm, welcoming body. Most of the women he’d tupped were temperamental and resentful, using him as revenge against a feckless husband or a world that seemed to be passing them by. Their attachment fragile as gossamer, he never really touched them. Not with his mind or his heart.
Fleeting in every way that mattered.
Victoria, ah, the fantasies centered on her were ones he’d never considered. He wanted to tangle his hands in her hair, destroy every weak coiffure that looked one breath away from detonating in a spill down her back. He wanted to record the sound she made when pleasure overtook her, only to call it forth later while pleasuring himself in his darkened bedchamber. He wanted to find out what she was afraid to ask for. What she craved. What would make her skin catch fire in seconds. He wanted to leave her so well-loved she wouldn’t be able to crawl from his bed for days.
He wanted to make love.
An act he never, ever thought he’d share with a woman.
But how could he ask this of her when he had no way to repay her for anything she shared with him? When she looked at the world from those amazing hazel eyes as if isolation was exactly what she expected to receive.
As if she didn’t deserve more.
As if she didn’t deserve love.
Dangerous, she was dangerous. And the first women in ages, maybe forever, who didn’t know it.
Any effort he made was much more than alleviating a tenacious erection, mild embarrassment every time he was within a hundred yards of her. The dilemma of a doggedly hard cock he could quickly solve on his own. In fact, he likely would before he climbed from this bed. Laughing at his idiocy, he watched the last vestiges of moonlight ripple across the ceiling, realizing it was anger coursing through him.
When he didn’t often allow himself to become angry—because the boy in the rookery had been nothing but.
Gross emotional displays weren’t his chosen method, too much loss of control. Why chance cracking his well-crafted façade? Still, it had been a long time since a woman had managed to unsettle him. Steal his breath with a single, unexpected tear coursing down her cheek. Dissolve the world around him, he suspected, should he give in to temptation and touch her.
“Tori,” he murmured, letting the name drop like a coin into the yawning depths of his soul. “What am I going to do about you, you troublesome package?”
Finn closed h
is eyes, coveting blessed calm for another moment. They were set to begin research into Victoria’s gift this morning at nine o’clock sharp. Unless he wanted to encounter the wrath of his brother, he’d best arrive at the library ten minutes early.
She thought she had him figured out when his experiences were changing him. Like clay being shaped into a different form, a cynical, temperamental man was emerging. Maybe he couldn’t escape his history after all. Those who crawled from the sewer eventually crawled back in.
He didn’t want to involve Victoria in his mess of a past. His mess of a future.
He kicked the sheet away with an oath. As if he could involve her.
Bastards were not an acceptable choice. Too, the League was going to need her if her gift was as powerful as Julian suspected, and Finn would never stand in the way of progress with the organization his brother had sacrificed his life to build. Victoria, in turn, would need their protection when it came to light a blocker existed in their world. And someday it would.
A romantic relationship that ended badly, when they always ended badly, would have her running—and he couldn’t risk her safety when he had nothing to offer. He grimaced in the darkness. Not when she had a baron, even one as loathsome as Rossby, on the hook.
Furthermore, and this is where it got tricky, he’d begun to talk to her. Unload the ballast of his life in minute chunks, lightening his burden, bringing about the unfortunate but irresistible desire to unload more. Worse, she’d begun to share her secrets with him.
He liked listening to her. He liked talking to her. Why it was…it sounded like…
Finn laughed and scrubbed his hand across his jaw. He and Victoria Hamilton were becoming friends.
